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Web Design & Development
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e-Commerce SolutionBuild eCommerce Web Sitee-Commerce News | Review
What is E-Commerce ?Electronic Commerce, or e-commerce, is buying and selling on-line. There exists no widely accepted definition for electronic commerce. However in general, e-commerce can be defined as any transaction that involves an on-line commitment to purchase or to sell a good or service, and that results in the import or export of this good or service. The term E-business is usually applied in a broader sense. It includes buying and selling on-line, but also other aspects of on-line business activity, such as purchasing, tracking inventory, managing production and handling logistics, customer support services, supply chain management and collaborative engineering. Benefits of E-CommerceFor suppliers, main benefits of E-Commerce are the possibility to automate and cut costs in repetitive processes, to reach a wider market, to source products from a wider supplier-base, and to be able to respond to customer queries quickly and cheaply. The lower cost base enables suppliers to price more competitively, and customers to purchase at lower prices . Consumers also benefit from e-commerce as normal business hours constraints do not exist any more with online access and they can choose and purchase from a bigger market Electronic commerce or e-commerce consists primarily of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as computer networks. The information technology industry might see it as an electronic business application aimed at commercial transactions. It can involve electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange, automated inventory management systems, and automated data-collection systems. It typically uses electronic communications technology such as the Internet, extranets, e-mail, Ebooks, databases, and mobile phones. According to Forrester Research (as cited in Kessler, 2003), electronic commerce generated sales worth US $12.2 billion in 2003. Historical developmentThe meaning of the term "electronic commerce" has changed over time. Originally, "electronic commerce" meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, usually using technology like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI, introduced in the late 1970s) to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. Later it came to include activities more precisely termed "Web commerce" -- the purchase of goods and services over the World Wide Web via secure servers (note HTTPS, a special server protocol which encrypts confidential ordering data for customer protection) with e-shopping carts and with electronic pay services, like credit card payment authorizations. When the Web first became well-known among the general public in 1994, many journalists and pundits forecast that e-commerce would soon become a major economic sector. However, it took about four years for security protocols like HTTPS to become sufficiently developed and widely deployed (during the browser wars of this period). Subsequently, between 1998 and 2000, a substantial number of businesses in the United States and Western Europe developed rudimentary Web sites. Although a large number of "pure e-commerce" companies disappeared during the dot-com collapse in 2000 and 2001, many "brick-and-mortar" retailers recognized that such companies had identified valuable niche markets and began to add e-commerce capabilities to their Web sites. For example, after the collapse of online grocer Webvan, two traditional supermarket chains, Albertsons and Safeway, both started e-commerce subsidiaries through which consumers could order groceries online. As of 2005, e-commerce has become well-established in major cities across much of North America, Western Europe, and certain East Asian countries like South Korea. However, e-commerce is still emerging slowly in some industrialized countries like Australia, and is practically nonexistent in many Third World countries. Key success factors in e-commerceSeveral factors have a role in the success of any e-commerce venture. They may include:
E-commerce problemsEven if a provider of E-commerce goods and services rigorously follows these sixteen "key factors" to devise an exemplary e-commerce strategy, problems can still arise. Sources of such problems include:
Product suitabilityCertain products/services appear more suitable for online sales; others remain more suitable for offline sales. Many successful purely virtual companies deal with digital products, including information storage, retrieval, and modification, music, movies, education, communication, software, photography, and financial transactions. Examples of this type of company include: Google, eBay and Paypal. Virtual marketers can sell some non-digital products and services successfully. Such products generally have a high value-to-weight ratio, they may involve embarrassing purchases, they may typically go to people in remote locations, and they may have shut-ins as their typical purchasers. Items which can fit through a standard letterbox - such as music CDs, DVDs and books - are particularly suitable for a virtual marketer, and indeed Amazon.com, one of the few enduring dot-com companies, has historically concentrated on this field. Products such as spare parts, both for consumer items like washing machines and for industrial equipment like centrifugal pumps, also seem good candidates for selling online. Retailers often need to order spare parts specially, since they typically do not stock them at consumer outlets -- in such cases, e-commerce solutions in spares do not compete with retail stores, only with other ordering systems. A factor for success in this niche can consist of providing customers with exact, reliable information about which part number their particular version of a product needs, for example by providing parts lists keyed by serial number. Purchases of pornography and of other sex-related products and services fulfil the requirements of both virtuality (or if non-virtual, generally high-value) and potential embarrassment; unsurprisingly, provision of such services has become the most profitable segment of e-commerce. Products unsuitable for e-commerce include products that have a low value-to-weight ratio, products that have a smell, taste, or touch component, products that need trial fittings - most notably clothing - and products where colour integrity appears important. Nonetheless, Tesco.com has had success delivering groceries in the UK, albeit that many of its goods are of a generic quality, and clothing sold through the internet is big business in the U.S. Acceptance of e-commerceConsumers have accepted the e-commerce business model less readily than its proponents originally expected. Even in product categories suitable for e-commerce, electronic shopping has developed only slowly. Several reasons might account for the slow uptake, including:
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